Only What I See

Casting about the web—or a bookstore or library—I find so many writers conveying a scope of knowledge about our world far greater than anything I will ever know. I am reminded, again, that I can only write about the little piece of the world that lies within my line of sight. This is, perhaps, the best I can offer to the proliferation of voices all working on the problems our planet faces.

                                     

And so, I write about yesterday.                                   

My town is split down the middle. The affluence and security of the east side has a west side shadow where life can be very hard indeed. I have lived here for sixteen years, and yet rarely read or hear anything about why this schism is allowed to linger.

Sometimes east and west find themselves, like sand paper and a block of wood, chafing at each other. Yesterday saw an evening like that. And I played a small part in this friction.

My trade at this time is to work in a local store. Last night a customer returned to the store very upset because she felt the item she’d been sold was not what she had asked for.

She bought a large amount of fabric, took it home, and began to construct her garment, only to find that she had not received the number of yards that she’d requested. Relying on the abilities of the clerk to provide her with the number of yards she needed, she cut into her fabric before she realized that she had, in essence, been shorted.

To complicate her lack even further, she discovered she did not have her receipt. Perhaps she did not know the store policy about returning items. Perhaps she could not conceive that a clerk might screw up a yardage count when measuring fabric. For whatever reason, she did not hold onto her receipt.

So the woman arrived at the store last night with only the material she’d bought. The store’s policy is that returns can only be accepted if the customer has a receipt for her purchase, which seems a reasonable requirement unless you’re the one missing that little slip of paper.

But when the customer is black and the manager of the day is white, this scenario can bring difficulties that predate the return. And when black customers shop in our store and the managers and clerks are always white, that reality can affect how interactions unfold as well.

I was working toward the back of the store and, at first, did not directly interact with this customer. But I heard the rising sense of frustration in the voices of the customer and the manager. How many times had the manager been required to handle situations when customers argued that they should be granted an exception to a return policy? And how many times had a customer believed the store should understand why such an obvious failure by the store to provide her with what she needed made the store’s return policy look like an attempt to deny a clerk’s mistake?

The customer became very angry about her situation. She came and went from the store no less than three times, searching for the missing receipt, making sure to bring all the fabric she’d been given so it could be measured again, and then losing a replacement receipt—probably because she was so frustrated and angry about the whole situation.

To the manager, the woman’s stomping feet and raised voice seemed unreasonable. But what did this strong reaction really stem from? What kind of a day had this woman endured in our town before she attempted to return her fabric? She was so upset that by the time I interacted with her, I could find no way past her anger. She clearly needed her fabric last night. Perhaps she’d promised a garment to someone and was working to meet a deadline. Whatever her reason, she actually purchased additional fabric—without obtaining a refund for the material she could not use. The purchase came to a little over $9.00 and I watched as she dug through her pockets to pull out and unfold a $5, four $1’s and pocket change to cover her bill.

The store policy says that we could not give her a refund without a receipt. The manager has been granted no discretion for situations like these. I knew the manager would have gotten into trouble with the corporate office if she had accepted the return without that little piece of paper. 

As I rang up the customer's new order, all I could do was to say how sorry I was that we had not been able to resolve this situation to her satisfaction. But she was still angry. She would not really make eye contact with me. She asked for the phone number to our corporate office, which I gave her. But that was all she would say.

And I did not attempt to argue with the store manager about the course we were taking with the woman. I did not say, “You now, we’re talking about $9 here. But this woman is a customer of ours and she is a passionate communicator. Wouldn’t it be simpler to say that we must have made a mistake, give her credit for the return, and mend this breach so we could have a better day? In this case, what is served by enforcing the return policy? 

Though words were never spoken, I thought I could feel all sorts of assumptions flying through the air last night. Because of the split in our town, opportunities for black and white citizens, for economically challenged and those who are better off citizens, for west-siders and east-siders, to interact just don’t happen very often. We don’t practice communicating with respect and compassion often enough.

And because we do not speak with each other often enough, tense interactions like the one last night take on great meaning for both parties. They dig the ditch that separates us a little deeper.

If our store were locally owned the manager of the day might have had more flexibility to deal with our difficulty. But corporate structures are constructed so that individual initiative is very difficult to exercise. I guess if a corporation with hundreds of stores experiences enough $9 losses, those losses begin to add up. And corporations, because they are not people, choose to focus on their profit margins.

I wonder, though, if losing $9 last night might have brought far greater rewards to our store. What is the dollar value for goodwill? How much is it worth to build bridges, and to listen while entertaining the possibility that fostering a sense of respect for each other will be more valuable than enforcing a store policy?

Last night in my town, the west and east sides had a conversation. But our extensive history of not speaking with each other dominated that conversation. We, I am afraid, dug the ditch between us a little deeper.